Existing methods for conducting person-to-person money transfers, as distinguished from business-to-business money transfers, typically involve one person writing a check to another person or giving cash to the other person. However, a cash payment of more than a few dollars may require the person making the payment to withdraw cash from an ATM (Automated Teller Machine) unless he/she either planned ahead for the payment or regularly carries around large sums of cash. In either case, such an arrangement is inconvenient and potentially unsafe for both the person making the payment as well as the person receiving the payment.
Writing a check is similarly inconvenient, as the person writing the check may not have his/her checkbook readily available, or the person receiving the check may not have a checking account. And in any event, he/she would need to manually deposit the check into his/her bank account in order to receive the funds, which is an added bother. The above issues are compounded when follow-up steps that normally accompany check-writing are considered, such as entering the check number and amount into an account registry, balancing the checkbook, and so forth. Last but not least, the person writing the check would risk exposing personal information on the check to the person receiving the check.
Electronic brokerage services from the likes of PayPal™ and MobiPay™ have attempted to alleviate the above inconveniences, but these services suffer from other drawbacks. For example, PayPal™, MobiPay™, and the like typically require both the person initiating the payment and the person receiving the payment to be members or otherwise have accounts opened with the services (i.e., an account holder normally may not transfer funds to a non-account holder, and vice versa). In addition, these services typically charge either the person making the payment, the person receiving the payment, or both, a small (but not insignificant) transaction fee. Furthermore, these services typically result in the payment being processed through ACH (Automated Clearing House) or a similar network, which can delay the availability of funds for up to several days. Finally, the services themselves are not banks or other financial institutions—but merely brokers—and must therefore rely on actual banks or other financial institutions to complete the money transfers.
Accordingly, for at least the foregoing reasons, it would be desirable to provide a more efficient way to conduct person-to-person money transfers.